Letters to God

I didn’t have the most stable home growing up. I guess I could call my childhood chaotic to save the feelings of those who raised me.

Throughout the chaos of dozens of moves and almost as many new schools and a revolving door of step-parents, I had one method to deal with the upheaval…I always wrote letters to god. So many letters that I wrote and placed in the highest point in my bedroom — the top of my closet. I left the letters open and face up so god could see them and read them easily.

I don’t recall ever receiving a response, however, I learned to manage my anxiety and fear and disappointment by writing out my thoughts and feelings to an all-knowing god.

My letters got me through childhood well enough, and it may have even turned into the career I have here on Substack. My writing follows the same pattern — point to the pain and try to diagnose it and then write a letter to file a grievance or ask for help or demand punishment or just tell the story of what is happening.

But these days, instead of waiting for divine intervention, I go straight to the source of the pain. Usually via an elected official.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, but I think there should be quotations around the word “raised.” I moved so often that I never really had a church home. We would attend for a while and then move and then find a new church. I don’t even know if we ever really settled on being Southern Baptists, or enjoyed the doctrine, but the religion was dictated by the rural areas of the Southern states I lived in.

Everyone was Christian, and most were Southern Baptists.

I was officially baptized in a creek under a grove of trees in Bunch, Oklahoma, when I was in 7th grade. I had also been saved at the altar of at least three or four different churches. I was always scared that I wasn’t really saved, and the rapture would happen, and I would be left behind with the unbelievers to go through a tribulation that would likely kill me and other believers for simply being Christian.

The doctrine I was raised under is often referred to as “trauma” these days, and I think I might agree, though I did find so many good people in the church who were loving and caring. Especially the women who devoted their lives to others, while being forced into domestic submission by the church doctrine.

I did not raise my children in the Evangelical church because of the fear and anxiety I felt growing up in the church.

I didn’t want my children to hear a train whistle at night and think it was the rapture. I didn’t want them to be told that someone was quite literally crucified and suffered on a cross and died for their “sins.” I did not want to interrupt their childhood with thoughts of devils and demons and hellfire. I didn’t want to pass on the rules of patriarchy to my sons, or the rules of submission to my daughters.

It’s not that faith itself is bad, but the feelings of being under the constant watch of a vengeful god, while being under a constant threat of a secular society, while also trying to comply with a system of constant guilt, that made me want to avoid it completely while raising my own children.

So I did.

Another issue with the SBC is the rampant misogyny which is seen in the recent banning of women preachers in the church. The Southern Baptist Church overwhelmingly voted for an amendment to their constitution in June, 2026. The SBC voted for amendment language requiring the exclusion of any church that acts, “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”

The misogyny of the SBC is as untenable for me as is the control.

The Southern Baptist Church is an example of a high-control religion and authoritarianism. It is the reason so many Evangelicals vote for perceived strongman leaders. It is the reason so many Evangelicals have a tolerance for total submission to a leader. It is the reason so many Evangelicals vote against their own self-interest. They believe they are martyrs for a higher purpose.

It is part of the reason my state is in the shape it is in. Indoctrination and fear.

And fear is a tool of control. Of authoritarianism. Of tyranny. And my former church was built on fear and suggested that authoritarianism is the only way for society to work. That the patriarchy is as natural as a woman’s need for submission. That if we just acquiesce to authority, they will take care of the pesky details.

In case you’re wondering, I haven’t found the god of my childhood, and I left the church decades ago. I don’t write letters to a god anymore, and I am not waiting around for answers.

I don’t advocate for any religion, though I am naturally tolerant of most — I still struggle with Evangelicalism. With the Southern Baptists. With the trauma of my youth and the years of enlightenment I lost to fear and intimidation and misogyny and control.

I lost curiosity to fear. I was expected to obey rather than question. And as a woman, I was to endure and forgive and remain sweet and quiet. I was taught that my salvation depended on my submission.

The authoritarianism I see around me every day feels very familiar. It is a natural consequence of the religion of my youth — the religion of so many of my elected officials. The religion that still impacts my daily life.

And I still write a lot of letters, but they look different these days. I write letters when I am angry and when I am afraid and when I see people being harmed by systems, religious or otherwise, that others call righteous or inevitable.

The difference with my letters is that I no longer place them on the top of my closet and wait for someone powerful to notice…

I put them where people can read them.

Thanks for reading them.

~Jess